but damn, i laughed hard at this.

I struggle sometimes with the whole princess thing that Jocelyn has got going on. I think having a boy first has really ruined me as a mother to a girl. Boys have such hands on play. Concret. Action. Point A to Point B. Dumping, pushing, scooping, driving, tooting, building… it’s all very simple really. When Jocelyn’s 2nd christmas rolled around, I honestly had no idea what to get her. Clueless, was I. What do girls DO, ANYWAY, was what I thought.

Storytime Treasury, A McCall Book Sleeping Beauty
The Wolf and the Seven Baby Goats
 

Now, of course, I have a much better idea, but it still seems to me that her playing is much less concrete. Much less action oriented. She’s quite content to put on a twirly dress and then kind of wander around. The most action oriented playing she does is when she plays in her kitchen or with her dolls. I realize that this type of playing is fine, it’s just harder for me to wrap my head around it. You’d think having BEEN A LITTLE GIRL MYSELF, with a huge interest in dressing up like a princess and dancing around the house would clue me in to the inner workings of my daughter’s head, but I think I’ve been abducted by aliens and lost that part of my brain or something.

Fratelli Fabbri Editori Publishers
I love the stars!
 

She has a very strong fascination with disney fairy tales. Now don’t get me wrong, I love fairy tales. LOVE THEM. I have collected fairy tale books all my life and read and re-read many different ones. I actually kind of took my older sister’s favorite fairy tale book when I went off to college and she had to nag at me for 5 years before she finally was visiting once and outright took it (damn her!)

Baby Princess, before her christening
I love the fabric all through the book, how it folds and trails.. ahh so beautiful!I wanted that hair long before I ever saw Princess Leia, and here’s why!
 

It’s just the disneyification of fairy tales that bugs me. And I’m lucky! My daughter is in love with CINDERELLA, and that was back in the golden age of disney before it started to change around the story! Don’t even get me started on The Little Mermaid and how they messed THAT up! (She dies. At the end, “Ariel” dies. Talk about taking liberties!)

All the fairies gathering at the christening
More stars! and look at those headdresses – don’t you just want to die, they’re so lovely?
 

Anyway, I don’t mind the fact that for the last month, she will often inform us, “I’m Cinderella!” and insist that we address her so. I don’t mind that she has changed the names of all her dolls and stuffed animals to Cinderella as well. I can understand watching a certain movie over and over and internalizing it to such an extent that you want to BE that character. I personally, wanted to be the Lady Amalphia and run around as a unicorn, and that was only when I wasn’t spinning around in a circle pretending to be Wonder Woman while wearing my Wonder Woman under-roos.

The fairies giving their gifts to the baby princess.
I used to pore over this page, and the one above, just studying each fairy and their apparel.
 

I don’t even mind the disney Cinderella movie that much.. But I decided to take some pains to introduce her (and Ethan, by default) to the other sides of fairy tales. The side that doesn’t have mice scampering around making dresses and birds dressing the main character. The disney movies don’t ever transport me to that magical place of times old and past of kings and queens and princesses..

I broke out my most beloved fairy tale book from when I was a girl. My grandmother must have ordered these books from a magazine. They are in a series called “McCall’s Treasury” and the copyright is for Fratelli Fabbri Editori –which i think is just the publishing house name, not the illustrator’s name.

She was my favorite – again, I love the fabric, falling away from the headdress, and also sheathing the princess.
Oh, and don’t forget the stars! Love the stars!
 

Each book contains 2 stories, and though my grandmother gave them to all my siblings, my brothers weren’t all that interested. I have the ones given to me, some of the ones given to my brothers, and some I’ve purchased on eBay.

The witch has done her worst, and now the youngest fairy will try to undo it.
Look at that sweet little baby face.. It’s hard to tell in this picture, but there are halos and halos of ruffles all around the baby’s head – so sweet!
 

This book was my favorite, and if you could see the actual book, you’d be able to tell – the binding is completely shot and one of the pages is ripped significantly. It originally was given to my brother Larry, and my grandmother even wrote a little note to him on the inside cover, with the date as 1972 (2 years before I was born). I’ve been meaning to scan pages from this book for a while, and was going to do it right when my computer died.

The princess as a teen, just after she pricks her fingers.. the material of the clothes – gorgeous!
 

I loved these books as a child, and I think I love them even more as an adult. These illustrations are simply breathtaking. I, of course, loved to pore over the fairies, especially their dress and their headwear. I love the way there are little stars in almost all of the pages, giving it that magical glamourous aura.

Love the teeny kingdown in the distance..
 

So far, the reception of this book has been met with all around approval. They’ve both requested it to be read to them at bedtime. Because of it’s condition (falling apart) and it’s value to me, it is kept away from other books out of their reach, but if they ask for it, I’ll sit down and look through it with them, and then put it away again when we’re done.

Stunning 2-headed dragon!
 

This page is so beautiful! It’s laid out over 2 pages and I had to scan the 4 corners separately and then try to fit them together. This is the last one I scanned, as the “wake up” scene is also on the title page it seemed pointless to scan it again. I strongly urge you to click and look at the bigger versions – they are even more stunning and you can see more detail.

I was thinking I may get some prints of the illustrations framed and put them up on the wall.

Anything to counteract this, currently on the wall above Jocelyn’s bed:

-amy needs a headdress like those just to wear around the house and wash dishes in.

Today at the kids’ school, they’re having ice cream sundaes. Last year when we saw some sort of notice that that was the special friday event before it happened, and I made frozen yogurt and sent it in with Jocelyn so that she could have a sundae. This year, we didn’t see anything, but Ethan mentioned it yesterday on our way home. James and I discussed it, and decided to let her try it and see what happened.

This whole milk protein intolerance is soooo frustrating. I hope she doesn’t come down with a cold next week (which is how it usually goes when she has anything with milk.)

It’s odd the things that can trigger it vs. the things that can’t. When we went on our utah family reunion camping trip in May, I tossed in the towel and let her have hot cocoa. I was sure she was going to get sick, as hello! It’s all powdered milk and chocolate! But she was FINE! I was flabbergasted. Either she’s outgrowing the intolerance, or the process of getting the milk to a powder cocoa form alters the milk protein enough that her body didn’t go into “germ mode” and start the snot production factory up.

A lot of ice cream is made by cooking egg and milk/cream in a custard and then freezing it – cooking the milk could also alter the milk protein, so even if she doesn’t turn up sick, I’ll still probably wonder if it’s her outgrowing it, or it just wasn’t protein-y enough.

So since we decided to let her have the ice cream today, which we decided during dinner out at Friday’s last night, we decided what the hell, and got the kids ice cream sundaes for dessert. I leaned over to Jocelyn and said, “We’re going to get you a cow’s milk ice cream sundae Jocelyn, and we’ll see if your body likes it or not.” She GASPED with excitement and was soooo excited. It was pretty cute. Then, when the ice cream came, she ate all the chocolate syrup out of the dish and barely touched her ice cream (too cold!)

So she may not get sick and it also may be just because she didn’t eat any ice cream in school! 🙂 I bet she will though, she usually doesn’t have any problem with cold things.

So, yeah. Cross your fingers for us. We’ll probably know come Monday or Tuesday.

I really want to make our home beautiful and I know we need some basic things (like color on the walls, and the 1/4 done flooring in the basement finished already) but a VERY basic thing I can do without the fuss and bother of previously mentioned basic things, is artwork.

My wallpaper square arrived by the way, and is hanging, not in the guest room as I originally planned, but is the first thing you see when you walk in the front door. I figured it can live there for a bit because I love it and I’ll never see it in the guest room! The reds aren’t as red as the picture (or my monitor?) showed, it was more of an orangey red, which is fine, but I would have rather had the true christmasy red that I thought it had. Still, very happy.

So today, I decided to get another piece, and popped up my favorites list on etsy. Many of the ones I had previously marked had been sold, but this beauty hadn’t already, and after a check to make sure James liked it, it is now going to be mine! (err, ok, ours.)

Some other items seller redheather has in his shop:

I especially like that middle one. Maybe because it has a hint of Hokusai’s “Great Wave of Kanagawa”, which I adore:

Now the waiting begins! And contemplating what kind of frame it should get!

-amy

Yesterday I got to work, and the network was down. Turns out, the AC unit that solely existed to cool down our server room got fried over the weekend, and the room was up over 115 degrees.

After an hour of freecell, I headed home to work, coordinating with my boss to send me a couple of items to my personal email. I got busy and was working away on my laptop when suddenly.. my computer blacked out and rebooted itself for no reason.

Not. Good.

I tried to boot up using Last Known Good Configuration, but it got to a certain point and then showed me a variation of the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) that said something about UNMOUNTABLE BOOT DRIVE and my heart started to beat a little more rapidly.

So then I booted into IBM’s (I have a thinkpad, a T42) Rescue and Recovery do-dad. I clicked on one of the choices, something about looking at files, and my hard drive started to make this noise:

CLANK. CLANK CLANK. CLANKITY CLANK. KKKKKKLLLLLAAAAAANK!

It was scary. It was NOT a noise you want your hard drive to make. I of course had been quickly trying to recall whether I’d moved the most recent batch of photos from my hard drive to my external hard drive, and if not, whether I had deleted them off teh camera as well (pretty sure i’m in teh clear with all that stuff)

There will of course, be some losses, like my quicken file, and other stuff that I’m sure I haven’t thought of yet, but overall, I’m not too upset about the loss. I AM VERY happy that I bought that external drive last year, because if not, ALL our photos were residing on my hard drive at that time and they would have been lost (except for the inferior copies on flickr).

So after chatting it up with IBM, I should be getting a new hard drive and a set of recovery disks (yay for 3 year warrantees) today at the earliest, friday at the latest. I hope I don’t have to sign for them. I hope they will be waiting for me when I get home tonight.

There will be other losses, like software, because I know some of the software I had was the downloadable kind, and others were of the “so very very old that it’s way upgraded and they’ll make me buy a new copy” kind.

Anyway. Not a good day for computers yesterday. At least, computers that I came in contact with.

How was your Monday?

There are no spoilers to any of the books in this post. Just thought you’d like to know.

This post was part of the previous post until I decided I probably shouldn’t kill the few readers I have with much too long a post, so here is episode 2!

5 minutes after midnight, someone came on the loud speaker and warned everyone that someone had put spoiler laden flyers on all the car’s windshields. That’s when I really started to feel hot-coffee-sneeze kind of nervous.

We actually eyed everyone warily as we exited the store. I’ve heard stories of drive by from the last book, with people shouting out, “Blah dies!” as people exited with their books. How horrible would that have been! I actually felt a WHOOSH of relief when we got safely to the car.

the next day I had choir practice from 2-5. I hadn’t finished reading yet, and I was actually nervous to leave the house. Later on that week, I read about all the hubbub about the NY times and Baltimore sun reviewing the book before it was supposed to be released, and how many people were disappointed by being “spoiled.” I just don’t understand this… if you don’t want to be spoiled, you should know not to read reviews! Sure, some say that the headline looking up at them from the print version on their doorstep spoiled it for them, but don’t they know that spoilers lurk everywhere? THE TRULY DEDICATED know that just staying inside the house with the doors locked and the phone off until the book is finished is the only way to ensure that the book wouldn’t be spoiled. Ignore your children, because they might reveal if Snape is good or bad!

This is all that was running through my head as I LEFT THE HOUSE without the book finished to go to choir practice. Seriously, it’s a wonder I showed up at all, I was almost just going to skip it. Not just for the time lost in reading but the DANGER WILL ROBINSON! DANGER! factor of leaving the house with the book unfinished.

But go I did, and sit I did and read I did every moment that wasn’t spent with mouth open and sound coming out. At one point, I was immersed in the book and I heard some of the younger high school girls talking. One of them stated, “I always thought Snape was good.” and I just about THREW the book at them as I hollered, “DON’T SAY ANOTHER WORD!” It turns out that they hadn’t past the first chapter, and were just tossing out their thoughts, but damn that hot-coffee-sneeze nervousness just about put me over the edge!

James was ahead of me in reading his copy this time around. Last time, I was ahead of him, and I must say, it’s much nicer having him ahead of me. I am very vocal. I can’t help it. I ooohhhh and ahhhh and gasp and hold my breath and make “eek!” noises, it’s just the way I am! So the fact that I was reading what he already knew about made it easier on him. Not like last time when he swore at me and stalked out of the room to another part of the house.

He finished … I think Saturday night. I finished early Sunday afternoon. I didn’t rush it at all, in fact, I would often pause and put the book down and contemplate what I’d read. I even started to take notes, because i wanted so badly to have someone next to me that was on the same page I was on to say, “Oooh, did you get THAT part?” Of course, there wasn’t anyone, so I wrote it down instead.

I laughed and wept and wept and wept some more, and while there are a few little details I think could have been improved, I enjoyed the last book immensely. I love how she had so many things planned out since book 1, and little details all through the series come to play an important part in the end.

And now, there’s just this feeling of calmness.. the hot coffee is gone, the urge to sneeze has passed. After I had finished, I had this sense of invincibility. I felt strong and muscley and “No one can hurt me NOW, I HAVE FINISHED!” I hopped on the internet with brazen recklessness. I unlocked all the doors and threw open the windows. Anyone driving by tossing out spoilers is POWERLESS AGAINST ME AND MY FINISHED-NESS!

I feel good. The book was very satisfying.

Now that I think about it, kind of like how you feel after a good sneeze.

I also feel sad at the loss that coming to the end of the series means. Kind of like you feel after a good sneeze.

But most of all, when I finally finished, I felt INVINCIBLE!

Just like you do after a good sneeze.

Because it’s going to be fun! Quick details, 7pm Saturday, at Manassas Presbyterian Church in Manassas. It will probably last little over an hour, and there will be refreshments afterward. Please come. I will love you forever.

More details here.

So that brings me to the refreshments. What to make.. what to make.. I love to bake, and baking for an event is even better, because then you don’t have to have all the baked goods in your house. Where you will just eat them. OK maybe not you, but me.

However, there is a complication. A few months ago, I was making cookie doug and thought, “oh I don’t need to change out the wire whisks to the batter beater, it’ll be fine.” This was at the end, when the dough gets really thick and stiff. So cue a minute later a horrible noise eminates from my mixer and look, sure enough, I broke the wire whisk. I can’t remember what happened next, but next I managed to break my mixer bowl.

So then I go looking online for a replacement part and run up onto some bad news.

See, I didn’t buy a pansy kitchen aid mixer like everyone else in the world has (including everyone on the food network). I bought a knock off of my mother’s mixer, a mixer she’s had for over 20 years.. hell, it may be over 30 years now, the Bosch Universal Mixer. This is a mixer that can knead enough bread dough to feed a family of 8, and yes, that’s what my mother used it for when I was young.

So I’ve always wanted a mixer like hers, hello 700 watts, not like the pansy kitchen aid of only 325 (i am probably wrong on both, but it’s more) and it is also a very high choice among those who make a lot of bread. So I bought one! Except no, I didn’t, I bought a knock off of one! Big mistake!

In my defense, I found about this new mixer, the Dimension 2000, which looks and acts just like the Bosch, from a little bakery/mixer part store in Utah, when my mom and I went in to get her a new lid for her mixer bowl. The bakery part of the shop had switched from the Bosch machines to the Dimension 2000 machines and couldn’t stop singing it’s praises. So when I got back home, I researched a bit, and purchased my mixer, hopefully to last me 20 years or more!

Well, I went online to buy me a new bowl… and the company has apparently gone out of business. Since there are still some parts out there, I bought a new mixer bowl for my mixer, but if anything does go wrong again with my mixer.. well, I’m screwed. Doh.

That should teach me a lesson to never go with the knock-off!

Anyway, I ordered it on Sunday night and thought it would get here in time for my baking spree for the concert, but UPS has it scheduled to arrive on Monday.

MONDAY!!!

Making tres leche cake (yum, you know you want to come) and carrot cake cupcakes with lemon cream cheese frosting is going to be a lot more work with only a hand mixer.

Anyone want to lend me their pansy ass extremely delightful and not to mention top quality kitchenaid?

We’re all (and by “all” I mean James and I) getting a little crazed in the panders household. Why, you ask?

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

I am so excited I can barely contain myself.

I am so sad and depressed that this is it, this is the end, damn.

If you don’t really care about Harry Potter, then you should stop reading now.
If you haven’t read the last 6 books and don’t want to hear possible spoilers, then you should stop reading now.
If you don’t want to hear theories and thoughts on the possibilities of book 7, then you should also stop reading now.

Continue Reading »

Because today is POP TART DAY at California Tortilla!

Head over to your local California Tortilla and they’ll give you a pop-tart. Isn’t July 18th WONDERFUL? It’s POP TART DAY! And, hell, get a burrito, nachos and darn tasty queso while you’re there. I highly recommend the crunchy barbeque ranch. Yum.

July 17th: Unbeknownst to the vacationing Pop Tarts,
they would all be eaten the next day.

Yesterday was fun. I was working, and Jocelyn was able to play pretty well by herself. It was interesting just to watch her. Ethan always settles down with his boy toys (legos, cars, transformers, construction machines, you name it) and will play while usually stating every 5 minutes, “Come play with me mommy!” It gets pretty old.

Jocelyn is different. She has never known a life of just playing on her own. Her brother or her schoolmates are always there. I’m not saying she’s NEVER played alone, but it just isn’t a common occurence. First she kind of wanders around, sometimes taking my suggestions, “What’s that? I think Julie is crying! (her doll) I think she needs her breakfast!” (Jocelyn scampers off to attend to Julie) sometimes not. She loves to dress up, and so at one point she had on her poofy pink dress up dress on, a pair of swimming goggles on her forehead like a headband, and was kicking a soccer ball over the house while wearing a pair of dress up shoes, which I just loved. (And yet did not grab a picture of, doh!)

Probably more than 5 times, she said, “Let’s go get my brother,” and I had to tell her that it wasn’t time yet. She just wasn’t quite sure what she was supposed to do all by herself. She always follows Ethan’s lead and she missed him. She also insisted that I stop calling her Jocelyn. For about an hour she was Cinderella, but then for the rest of the day she wanted to be called Ariel.

She was doing good at naptime (during which she took off all her clothes and put on Ethan’s, including his underwear, and then climbed into his bed to snuggle in) until the auto shop called and said my car was ready. They also said they could pick me up. So no nap for her.

I’d been kicking around the idea of a combination ballet/tap summer dance class for her because a) she is always always dancing. dancing and singing, that’s my girl, and b) loves loves to dress up and twirl around and c) hello! a dance class! for toddlers! need I say more, SHE WILL LOVE IT! So after we picked up the car, we went to target to check out their supply of leotards and tights (too big on both counts) and then went to the dance center in our community to sign her up.

Class starts TODAY, so we went from there to pick up Ethan and then to a dance shop in Manassas to get our supplies. The dance center said that since it was just a summer 6 week class, the cheap tap & ballet shoes from wal-mart would suffice. I don’t shop at Wal-mart, but I also didn’t want to pay out the nose for supplies for a 6 week dance class. I broke down and called them to see they actually had tap & ballet shoes, and they said they used to carry them, but now didn’t. I also called k-mart and target, and no dice. So we went to the very nice dance boutique and got Jocelyn real pink leather ballet shoes and sweet little white tap shoes. I’m glad I didn’t have to step foot into wal-mart, to tell the truth.

The nice lady got her fitted with shoes while Ethan found the stash of toys in the corner and kept himself busy. Jocelyn stood on the square of hard floor in front of the mirror and watched herself stomping and tapping and clicking her tap shoes with a look of utter delight on her face. We picked up her tights and leotard from there too. Now that she has real stuff instead of cheap fake stuff, maybe we’ll do a session or two of dance during the year as well.

When I was a little girl, for one of my birthday parties, we had a dancing theme. I remember my mom made tutus for all my friends and we all danced around to Olivia Newton John’s “Let’s Get Physical.” I also remember when I got my first pair of ballet shoes. I wasn’t in ballet. I did take ballet (and modern dance, and gymnastics) years later when I was about 10, but my first pair of ballet shoes my mom ordered for me from a catalog when I was 4 or 5. I remember the day they came, and putting them on with my leotard and long pink tutu.. my mom says I hardly ever took them off. She said I was dancing all the time.. dancing and singing. I wonder where Jocelyn gets it from 🙂

This morning Jocelyn excitedly told Ethan, “Today is my dancing class!!”

I hope it will be a hit. I want to stay and watch the class (at least the first one!) but am torn because I know Ethan won’t be able to sit still for an hour. I guess we’ll see how it goes. I should have put a movie on my video ipod.

ps – the mystery fever is gone, but there is a notice up on her classroom door saying how hand foot mouth disease has been spotted in her class. GREAT. I don’t think that’s what she had, but now I’m just hoping she doesn’t catch it!